


BaZombie!

by FrenchRoast



Category: The Big Bang Theory (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-15
Updated: 2014-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-13 07:34:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2142552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrenchRoast/pseuds/FrenchRoast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sheldon, Penny, and the rest of the Big Bang Theory crowd try to cope with the zombie apocalypse, with varying success.</p>
            </blockquote>





	BaZombie!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mullu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mullu/gifts).



Sheldon would never admit, no matter how many times Penny insisted otherwise, that it was anything more than coincidence that saved his friends from the initial zombie outbreak. It was mere chance, not fate, that Z-day was the same day they had all converged on Sheldon and Leonard’s apartment. After all, that’s where most of them usually were, since everyone was drawn to Sheldon’s superior intellect. Nevertheless, Sheldon did acknowledge (to himself) that Z-day was not entirely born out of coincidence, but rather a series of poor decisions that converged at the most inopportune moment. 

Sheldon blamed Bernadette and Amy Farrah Fowler for the majority of those poor decisions. The microbiologist and the neurobiologist had teamed up to study a dead guy who’d had the bad taste to die of a bizarre rabies variant that mimicked certain properties of a prion virus Amy Farrah Fowler had once researched. Then Bernadette ill-advisedly asked Wolowitz to bring her lunch. He and Raj had shown up with Raj’s mongrel in tow. When Amy’s monkey got loose in the lab, the dog started chasing the monkey, one thing led to another, and within 24 hours, Z-day was upon the city, and then the state, and then the world.

Sheldon hadn’t wanted to house everyone in their apartment, but by the time they realized what was going on, it was too late. Shoving Wolowitz and Raj out and risking the entrance of a zombie would’ve been more dangerous than letting them stay and eat their food supplies. Besides, Sheldon had reasoned to himself at the time, the two of them might be handy as decoys later when they left to scavenge for food. 

\--------

The great thing about Z-day was no more Cheesecake Factory, probably ever again. The sucky thing about Z-day was being trapped with Sheldon and Wolowitz 24-7, with her own apartment just out of reach. 

Oh, and all the people who got killed or turned into zombies, too. That was bad. 

Not that Penny hadn’t considered giving in to the zombies once or twice in the first couple of weeks while they were all adjusting to Emergency!Sheldon. Luckily, hearing the moans and gnashing of teeth outside kept her from doing anything rash. 

If she could just get to her apartment, Penny sighed, she could get her guns. And some nail polish. She’d learned how to shoot growing up in Nebraska, and while she’d surprisingly not had to use any of her guns in the city, Penny still had them. Just in case. It’s not like Leonard would be protecting her from anyone with that lightsaber flashlight of his.

Finally, after nearly a month had passed (including several days with no moans, and food supplies dwindling), Penny could take it no more. She waited until the others were distracted bickering over the best order to watch the Star Wars movies. With her apartment key in hand, she calmly pushed aside the small dresser they’d shoved in front of the door, checked the peephole to make sure the hallway was clear, then unlatched and unbolted the door. Penny opened the door and shut it behind her and ran for her apartment across the hall, but running didn’t seem necessary. There were no zombies in sight. She quickly unlocked her own apartment and went inside, still cautious, but it was obvious her apartment had been untouched for the entire month. 

After finding her guns and securing them on the holster her dad had given her that she’d never thought she’d ever wear, Penny wrestled her suitcase out of her closet and began to throw random necessities into it (magazines, toiletries, rum, candy, condoms, clothes, toilet paper, ammo for the guns, wine, oreos…pretty much whatever Penny hadn’t had access to or had run out of in Leonard’s apartment over the last month). She sat on the suitcase to close it enough to zip it, then tipped it up on its wheels and dragged it to the door. She peeked out in the hallway again to make sure it was clear, and locked her apartment behind her before dragging the suitcase across the hallway into Sheldon and Leonard’s apartment. She shut and bolted the door behind her. 

“No, it HAS to be chronological! Any other way is wrong!” Sheldon’s voice was near-to-shrieking.

They were still bickering over Star Wars.

Penny unzipped the suitcase and dumped its contents onto the ground in front of the others, who finally turned and started paying attention at this point. 

“Merry Christmas, bitches!” Penny said, followed by a laugh. She held up her two guns. “Now I say we stop fighting with each other, and after I stuff my face with Oreos, we go fight some zombies!”

\-----------

It was not a surprise to anyone that Penny did the bulk of the scavenging. Or that Bernadette usually accompanied her. What did surprise everyone was Sheldon’s insistence on going at least some of the time, given his usual aversion to risk.

It made more sense once he began to push them to go to the comic book store. 

They all regretted giving in as soon as they ran into Stuart.

Or rather, what used to be Stuart. 

“Oh no,” Penny said as they realized who it was. “Poor Stuart.”

“Rwwwaaaar,” Zombie!Stuart moaned, trapped behind the comic book counter. His rotting hands clung to a still-wrapped comic. It was hard to tell why a zombie would still be attached to a comic. 

“Should we put the poor guy out of his misery?” Bernadette asked, leveling her rifle at him.

“No!” Sheldon shouted. “Bernadette, you can’t do that!”

“Sheldon…he wouldn’t want to live like this,” Penny pointed out. “Besides, he could hurt someone.”

“Oh, I don’t care about Stuart,” Sheldon said. “But he’s got a mint condition Marvel Comics issue number 1 comic in his hands. That rifle would rip it to pieces. Do you know how much a comic like that is worth?!”

Penny and Bernadette both sighed the sigh of people who had been dealing with Sheldon for far too long to know better than to waste time arguing the stupidity of a situation like this with him. For a guy that claimed to be logical and analytical, he had some extremely dumb priorities and fixations.

“Fine, Sheldon,” Penny snapped. “Get your comic.”

“Thank you, Penny. Bernadette, you can shoot to your little heart’s content as soon as I have the comic safely in my hands,” Sheldon said as he walked over to the counter and Zombie!Stuart. “Stuart, I’d like to see that comic.”

Zombie!Stuart moaned unintelligibly. He had no way to convey to Sheldon that he was no longer a sad comic book store owner, but a sad zombie. Not that there was much difference. Even as a zombie, Stuart felt unheard.

“Stuart! I said I want to see that comic!” Sheldon said more forcefully. He reached out for the comic, and tried to snatch it from Zombie!Stuart’s hands.

“Oh shit,” Bernadette and Penny said in unison, realizing what was about to happen an instant before Zombie!Stuart’s mouth clamped down onto Sheldon’s left wrist. Sheldon screeched and jumped back.

“He bit you!” Bernadette yelled.

“Nuh-uh,” Sheldon said in complete denial even as blood dripped from the ragged wound on his wrist and left hand. “I got my comic!” He held it up gleefully with his uninjured right hand. The shock of the bite had made him retreat into that child-like state he fell into occasionally. 

“We need to get him back to the apartment,” Penny said. 

“Why, so he can bite everyone? We need to shoot him. We need to shoot him now,” Bernadette insisted.

“Amy will kill us if we kill him here, like this. And can’t you use him as a test subject or something for that serum the two of you have been working on?”

Bernadette clenched her hands tightly around her rifle. “Maybe. But we have to hurry, and we need to deal with Stuart before we go.”

“Can you do it? I’ll get Sheldon into the car.”

“Put’em in the trunk,” Bernadette ordered. 

“But Berna—“

“Just do it!” she snapped, her voice doing that scary thing Howard had told them about, but Penny had never before had directed towards herself.

\--------

Sheldon felt…different. Much less anxious about a variety of things, and now only truly anxious about one thing: brains. Brains had always been important to him, but since that moment in the comic book store, something had clicked into place. A final piece of the puzzle he’d spent his entire life searching for, yet never realizing until now what he most needed was not simply his own brains. Sheldon needed everyone’s brains. It was selfish of them, keeping them locked up inside their heads, not letting Sheldon harness the combined power of all the brains of humanity. Think of the things he could discover! But he couldn’t focus, not now. Not with so many brains out there, brains he needed. Brains he had been denied. Everything was so dark right now. Had it always been so dark? Where was everyone? 

And then, light! Blinding, surging, brilliant light! Was this death? Was this…no, there was Penny and Bernadette, and the front of the apartment building. They were pulling him out of the trunk of the car. Dragging him into the apartment building.

Bernadette had more science brains than Penny, but Penny had useful brains too. Maybe Sheldon had underestimated her brains. He would get them and find out. Then he would get more brains. There were more around here. 

“Leonard! Get Raj and Amy and Howard! We found Stuart, and he’s a zombie and he bit Sheldon,” Penny blurted as soon as they were inside; Leonard had been acting as sentry. Leonard would have decent brains. Sheldon hoped he would get a chance to have Leonard’s mom’s brains, because he knew they would taste superior. No, be superior, Sheldon told himself. Dr. Sheldon Cooper was not going to become a zombie. That was imp—the scent of three more brains approaching distracted Sheldon. Was he going to be a zombie? This was all Amy and Bernadette’s fault. Or was it? If Raj hadn’t had that dog with him, it wouldn’t have chased the monkey, and there would be no Z-day. It was Raj’s fault. Of course it was. Sheldon knew he had to tell the others. Then they’d give him their brains willingly.

“Sheldon, are you okay?” Amy asked.

“Raaaaarrjj,” Sheldon moaned. A look of surprise slowly washed over his face, which had become noticeably more pallid, with a twinge of green since they’d left the comic book store. “Raaaaaaaaj.”

“Holy…” Raj said. “He’s a zombie. A zombie Sheldon.”

“Is he saying Raj?” Wolowitz asked.

“I think he’s just…moaning,” Leonard said. “ ‘Raaaawr’ just sounds a lot like ‘Raj’ held out for a long time.”

If Sheldon could’ve rolled his eyes at this point, he would’ve. Instead, he tried for volume.

“RAAAAAJJ!” Why weren’t they giving up their brains so he could use them? Clearly, Sheldon was going to have to start taking them soon if they wouldn’t give them up willingly. 

“Well, we can’t leave him like this,” Bernadette pointed out. “He’s not full zombie yet, but he will be in a few minutes, and he’s dangerous. He’s already too far gone for the serum, Amy.”

Amy nodded, silent. 

“Amy, why don’t us besties go upstairs?” Penny suggested, trying to be helpful. Amy nodded again, and they proceeded up the stairs. Sheldon moaned as two of the brains left. He hoped they would return. He needed more brains. He needed them soon. 

Once the others were sure Amy was out of earshot, Wolowitz spoke up. “So who wants to do the honors? Leonard? You were roommates for a long time. You have more reason than anyone else.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I gotta bow out. Roommate agreement. I did promise not to shoot him, even if he did become a zombie. You guys can flip for it.”

“I have a better idea,” Raj said. “I say we play Rocks, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock. Winner gets to kill Zombie!Sheldon.”

“I like it,” Leonard said approvingly. “In its own weird way, it’s a fitting tribu—ahhhh!” Leonard screamed as Zombie!Sheldon lost patience and rushed at him. 

“RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAJ! RAAAA—“ he howled until silenced by a rifle shot. Zombie!Sheldon fell back against the broken elevator’s closed doors and slumped to the ground, no longer concerned with physics or brains.

“Or we could do what I tried to do at the comic book store, and kill his zombie ass before he bites someone,” Bernadette growled.


End file.
